The Orphan Pearl

by Erin Satie

  “I would have fallen,” she said.

  “But you didn’t.” He cranked the wheel to raise the full bucket of water to the lip of the well, unhooked it from the rope, and set it down in front of the horse. While the mare lowered her head to drink, Ware cupped Lily’s cheeks with cold, wet hands and pressed a kiss to her lips. “That was amazing. Terrifying, but amazing.”

  She sagged against him. “I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life.”

  “I told you I would find you.”

  “I should have believed you.” She rubbed the spot just over her left breast. Her heart hurt. Too many feelings. The horse, tethered by the reins in her other hand, nickered. “I should have waited.”

  “It’s over.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her tight against him, warm and solid. “In a few hours we’ll be home.”

  Lily winced at her dirty, wrinkled gown. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for us to ride through London like this, doubled up on the same horse, with my legs exposed to the knee.”

  “A fair point.” Ware cupped her jaw, brushed his thumb along her cheek. “Why don’t we rest first? No need to rush.”

  §

  They took a room at a coaching inn, signing the register with false names but, honestly, as man and wife. Once inside, Lily collapsed on the bed. She was too exhausted for words, couldn’t even be bothered to ask Ware where he was going when he left.

  He returned eventually — some time had passed, enough for Lily to drift into a light slumber. The creak of the door nudged her toward consciousness, and Lily cracked one eye open wide enough to watch a pair of maids follow Ware into the room bearing a large hip-bath, and after them a third girl with two wooden pails. She poured boiling water into the tub and all three women left.

  Ware lifted Lily to her feet. She let him carry almost all her weight, then stood still while he stripped her like a doll. When he bent to pick her up, she dodged and lowered herself into the hot water. She took up the soap, more than eager to be clean, but once it was in her hand all she had the energy to do was stare at it.

  Ware knelt at her side and slipped the bar of soap from between her limp fingers. He dipped it in the water, then lifted one of her arms and massaged the lather into her skin. He covered her arm from shoulder to fingertip in slippery, rose-scented foam before splashing it clean.

  “I ordered supper,” he said. “Unless you think you’ll be too tired to eat.”

  Lily yawned. “I don’t know what happened. I was wide awake and then…”

  “Too much excitement.” Ware moved to the opposite side of the tub, picked up her other arm. Lily watched his hands work over her skin. He didn’t rush, didn’t miss an inch.

  Ware shifted to her feet, cupped her heel in one hand and soaped up her instep, her sole, took hold of each toe individually and smoothed the soap between them.

  “No such thing,” said Lily with lazy good humor. “Though I might have agreed if you’d asked me while I was still on the roof, thinking I was about to die.”

  His grip tightened on her foot, a sudden quick spasm followed by a slow, deliberate release. “It was dangerous,” he agreed, flexing his fingers before moving on to her calf and shin.

  “He had me in a bare room.” Lily shivered as his slick fingers stroked the back of her knee. “No books, no pictures, no furniture. Nothing to do for days on end.”

  Ware’s expression hardened, but he focused his attention on washing her, lathering and rinsing her thighs before circling round to her back.

  “He told me I was too clever for my own good,” she added. “Like that could justify keeping me in a stuffy bare prison.”

  “Christ,” Ware whispered, palms heavy on her shoulders. “Never again, Lily. I promise.”

  “The worst part is that I almost agreed to give him al-Yatima,” Lily continued, while he rubbed slow circles down her spine. “I really believed, for a minute, that I’d been wrong all along. That he would help me set things to rights.”

  Ware splashed water over her back, rinsing the soap away, and circled around again. Lily knelt, so he could reach, and let him stroke his slick hands over her breasts, down to her belly.

  “Wrong?” A little wrinkle appeared between Ware’s brows. He touched his index finger to her nipple to catch a drop of water before it fell, frowned and shook it away. “About what?”

  “He said you should have asked for more from Palmerston. That you made a bad trade.”

  Ware snorted. “I’m sure I did. You could drive yourself mad trying to get the better of men like Palmerston—or Clive, for that matter. Better to settle for getting what you want, and then get out of their way.”

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “That will be our food.”

  He finished washing her front, his movements efficient, almost impersonal. When she was clean, he helped her to her feet, reached for the towel and dried her.

  Lily looked around, wondering where Ware had dropped her shift and if she could wash it in the tub before putting it on again. Before she spotted it Ware handed her a new one. It was a little big, but clean and freshly pressed. “Where did this come from?”

  “I asked the innkeeper if he could find something clean for you to wear.”

  As soon as she’d pulled it over her head, he handed her a plain silk wrapper.

  “A robe, too?”

  “It’s a miracle, I know.”

  Ware pointed her toward the table, a round, sturdy thing positioned near the window. Lily buttoned the wrapper while Ware detoured to fetch the tray waiting outside the door, loaded down with soup and hot tea. He placed a bowl in front of her, a thick slice of white bread, poured out the tea and added sugar before repeating the process for himself.

  It was a thick curried cauliflower soup and managed to combine a soothing mildness with rich spices. She took a sip of tea, hot and black, then ripped the crust off her bread and dipped it in the soup. Completely inappropriate behavior here, but it had been a habit in Acara, and comforted her now.

  They ate in silence, for the most part. Every mouthful seemed to make her drowsier. “It’s been a long day,” she said, eyeing the bed as she finished.

  “You need to sleep,” said Ware, from the other side of the table.

  She crawled between the sheets and watched idly as Ware stripped. His clothes were rumpled, dirtier than a single day of hard travel could account for. She hadn’t asked what had happened before he arrived at her father’s estate, had she? Not a single question about how long he’d been awake, or how he’d felt.

  “Shh.” Ware pressed two kisses against her eyelids. “Close your eyes.”

  Lily thought about getting up, returning the services he’d offered her. She shifted a few inches over on the mattress before giving up. Another day. She heard the curtains clatter shut, the swish and trickle of water in the tub. She drifted, her senses alert but her sense of time dulled, her limbs heavy.

  The water noises stopped eventually. Other noises followed, though she couldn’t place them exactly. Ware moving about the room. The bed bent with his weight, and the next thing she knew his hand was on her calf, drawing the wrapper and shift up to her waist, nudging her legs apart.

  She wasn’t displeased, just tired. Too tired to play her part. That was fine; she’d been married long enough to know that needs couldn’t always be the same.

  His mouth clamped on her sex. Hot, wet… patient. He licked and stroked as though he had all the time in the world. The pleasure concentrated, began to climb, a sweet lullaby that carried her into the clouds.

  When she was young, on her family’s estate in Sussex, she’d once seen a hot air balloon. She felt like she was riding in that balloon now, a bubble of color rising slowly, easily into the sky. Up and up and up to dizzying heights where she floated, swam, jellyfish-light and free.

  The orgasm crested and broke, wiping her mind blank as a white sheet of paper. With her last shreds of awareness, Lily felt the warmth of Ware’s
body as he lay down next to her, his breath ruffling her hair as he said, “Sleep now.”

  She slept well into the next day, waking around noon. London beckoned, and all the problems she knew would only become more urgent from being neglected. Adam had to be frantic, Alfie miserable. The clock would be ticking down for Mehmet Ali, and her father must be working desperately to engineer a last-minute coup.

  “Worry about it tomorrow,” said Ware, who’d somehow obtained a basket filled to the brim with tiny, extravagantly red strawberries. He parceled them out—one for her, one for him—while she lolled naked on the bed. “The world will keep spinning without us, Lily. At least for a day.”

  So instead of worrying, they made love. Afterward, limbs still tangled, they lay side by side and chatted idly about inconsequential things. If Ware wanted to close the door on the rest of the world for a day, she would turn the lock and hide the key.

  They fell asleep again around midnight, and woke with the dawn. After a light breakfast, they took seats on an early coach headed into the city. They made good time and reached Ware’s home not much after noon. One of the new townhouses in Belgrave Square, huge and showy.

  The vestibule was frightful, cluttered with gold statuettes and porcelain vases, an unlit tiered crystal chandelier hanging overhead. Lily peeked into the adjacent rooms, but they were worse—brocade curtains with tassels, velvet-upholstered chairs, layers of intricately patterned carpets—more tassels—and a riot of terrible, mud-brown paintings in elaborate gold frames on the walls.

  Lily didn’t know what to say.

  “Change it all,” offered Ware. “I don’t care.”

  “You… don’t?”

  “My father picked it out.”

  “Like the carriage,” she said, troubled in a way she hadn’t been by the carriage. “Though—you’ve been living in the country, haven’t you?”

  “The old Harewood pile,” agreed Ware. “It looks much the same.”

  A diffident cough interrupted them, and they paused their conversation to attend to the butler. He had a message—several messages, in fact, though they all repeated the same information with varying levels of urgency: the Duke of Hastings had suffered an apoplexy, and was not expected to live.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  She arrived at Hastings House in the same travel-worn gown that she’d been putting on, with increasing reluctance, every day since she’d left Brighton. She tidied her hair as best she could during the carriage ride over, but her hands shook so badly that she did more harm than good. So she crossed the threshold looking much like the vagabond she’d been when she arrived in London months earlier, afraid that she’d be barred entry and knowing, all the while, that she’d come home.

  Caro met her in the vestibule but didn’t follow her upstairs. Adam sat with her father, perched on the bed, back bowed. Her father lay still, chest rising and falling with each shallow breath, sheets tucked crisply around his waist.

  “He’s alive?” She hurried to her brother’s side. “What happened?”

  “He breathes,” said Adam, which was not quite the “yes” she had hoped to hear.

  “Oh, Papa.” Lily wrapped an arm around her brother’s shoulder, more for her own comfort than his.

  Their father looked so different. It had only been a few days, hadn’t it? But now his flesh seemed to sag away from the bones beneath, but for the red blotches on his cheeks he seemed bloodless, made of wax.

  She stroked her father’s arm. “Wake up, Papa. You’ve so much to do.”

  “He thought you were dead,” said Adam. “Or that you’d run away again, I’m not sure which.”

  “Me?”

  “Someone delivered news—about you—and it gave him a shock. Brought on the attack. Where have you been, Lily? I sent word to everyone I could think of yesterday, hoping you’d have a chance to see him, before…”

  “I was hiding.” Lily considered explaining the past weeks to Adam, the machinations with the Orphan Pearl, marrying Ware and hoping she could trick her father into giving her name back, but she couldn’t summon the energy. It didn’t matter. “And then—hiding again, I suppose.”

  Adam disentangled her arm from his shoulders, pushing her away. Unimpressed, no doubt. “Why don’t you—there’s plenty of room on the other side of the bed.”

  Lily cringed, but she went meekly enough. Half sat on the bed, shifting so she could hold her father’s hand. She traced the veins threading up to his knuckles, bulging and blue, while the pressure at the back of her eyes built.

  “You could have told us,” said Adam. “Maybe you don’t want to remain in England. I don’t understand, and it seems I can’t stop you. But you ought to have sent word.”

  “Sent word? About what?”

  “I have no right to blame you,” Adam continued. “I’ve certainly never hesitated to antagonize him. It never occurred to me that… but he was frightened, Lily. What do you think it’s like for us, when you disappear?”

  “Adam—” Her throat clogged, and she was glad. She had been angry at her father, and someday in the future, when he wasn’t at death’s doorstep, she would let herself feel it again. But not now. A tear worked its way down her cheek, and she went back to stroking her father’s hand.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said to her unresponsive father. “Just come back to us.”

  “Hastings kidnapped her,” said Ware, from the door. “Locked her in a room and left her there for more than a week. She escaped two days ago—is that when Hastings got his message?”

  “Lily? Is this true?” Adam asked.

  “It was that estate with the lake, do you remember? Not far from Brighton. The caretakers looked after me. Fed me, in any case.”

  Adam bowed his head as he listened, hiding his expression. After a long pause, he said, “Excuse me,” and slipped out of the room.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Ware.

  Lily didn’t look up. “If we’d come right back…”

  “Come directly here, you mean? Even if we had the foreknowledge, we wouldn’t have outpaced the courier who brought news of your escape.”

  “The last words I said to him were… very angry.” She wished she could take them back. And while she was wishing for things she couldn’t have, she might as well go farther. She wished she could return to the very beginning, to the day she first arrived in England, and give him the pearl right then. She had set herself against her own father, she had beaten him to a draw, and all she had to show for it was the taste of ashes in her mouth. “I worried about what would happen if I gave the pearl up. I never asked myself what could go wrong if I kept it. He’s always seemed so strong. Ware, he’s skin and bones. No flesh at all. That didn’t happen overnight.”

  Ware sighed. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Sit with me?” Lily asked, grateful when he perched beside her and nestled her hips against his.

  Adam returned a little later. “I’m sorry. I should have realized that there would be more to the story. I should have known who to blame, and I shouldn’t have accused you.”

  Lily shook the apology away. “Not now.”

  Adam resumed his place at their father’s side and they kept vigil late into the night. Servants came to tend to their father, coaxing broth into his mouth—he did seem to swallow some of it, though it was hard to tell—and changing his linens. While they worked, Lily and Adam retreated to eat. Ware came and went, and so did Caro, but it was Adam and Lily who slept on opposite sides of the wide couch, who woke gritty-eyed and cramped when the doctor arrived in the morning, and nodded politely when the prognosis had not changed.

  “I’m not entirely sure why I’m here,” said Adam, later that day. “I’ve spent the past two years avoiding him.”

  Lily kept vigil at her father’s side, holding his hand. “I missed him while I was gone.”

  “Truly?”

  Lily nodded. “Being away, it was easy to remember the good times and not the bad. I’d think bac
k on how he’d quiz us every night about our lessons. Read our essays, and make us rewrite them if he didn’t think they were good enough. I never doubted that he cared.”

  “Would have been easier if he’d cared less.”

  “He’d explain anything,” Lily said. “No matter what we asked, even when we were little. If we had a question, he answered like we were adults who could understand.”

  “I remember that. For a long time, I didn’t realize how unusual it was.”

  “He took us out of the nursery as soon as we could sit in a chair without falling over,” said Lily. “Sat us at his table, even when he had guests.”

  “And encouraged us to participate in all the talk,” agreed Adam. “Now that I look back on it…”

  “We must have been babbling at generals and ministers when we were toddlers,” finished Lily. “Can you imagine?”

  “I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to do the same.” Adam sighed. “I’ve always wished I could be fearless the way he is.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You’re right,” said Adam. “There were good times.”

  She knew that her relationship with her father had deteriorated beyond all repair. She knew that if he woke, if he returned to himself in any significant way, they would soon find themselves at odds. She couldn’t change that. But he had been father enough to deserve this—a witness, a hand to hold onto, a sickroom cleansed of bitterness and resentment.

  He died at sunset.

  Lily didn’t let go of his hand until it was cold. And she didn’t stop weeping until long after that.

  §

  John was not sorry the old man had died. It surprised him that Hastings’s children took his death so hard; what, exactly, were they mourning? They ought to have celebrated.

  But he knew better than to say so.

  So he sat by Lily while she stared vaguely into the distance. He held her at night when she cried. And all the while, he bit his tongue against a string of protest. Your father did not deserve this, he wanted to say. He was an evil, selfish, manipulative old bastard and it would make more sense to see you spit on his grave than it does to see you cry over it. She would not thank him for his honesty, nor for reminding her of all the things she’d said about her father while the man was still alive. Quite the opposite, he suspected.